Legion Alpha: Protection Paladin - Talent Tree Opinion

I have listed how the talents look today in alpha and gave my opinion on them in the Alpha forum and I thought to share it here as well for the interested.

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First Avenger Increase the damage of Avenger´s Shield by 100% and increase the chance for its cooldown to reset by abilities and talents by 100%. But it now hits 1 target (instead of 2).

The only time I would consider this talent, would be at interrupt fights, like for example Xhulhorac (interrupting the imps). The “only” thing this talent does otherwise is to increase your damage.

Day of Reckoning Hand of Reckoning now has 3 charges. Additionally, targets affected by Hand of Reckoning deal 10% less physical damage on you.

If you look at these 3 talents from a defensive point of view, then Day of Reckoning is the only one that gives dmg reduction on you. Even thou, another spell for dmg reduction to have in mind when tanking, I think it’s a really good talent.

Concentrated Hammer Your Hammer of Righteous always gain the damage bonus of consecration and no longer has a cooldown.

This would be a talent to choose if you need to tank several mobs, in different areas, were you have to run around a lot, like for example in dungeons. Then making your Hammer of Righteous AoE hit without standing on your Consecration pretty useful.

(30)

Holy Shield Increases your block chance by 10% and allows you to block spells. Additionally, when you block, you deal Holy dmg to your attacker.

Holy Shield gives 10% increase block chance. Meaning every 10th hit increases the chance to block one. Then depending on what your block chance is from start it gets added of course. The base block chance as prot pala with no gear is 11%. Adding the Artifact shield at lvl 100 with no talents increases the block chance to 14%. A general block chance fully geared lvl 100 is around 30%. So adding this talent increase the block chance to 40% in general. Meaning, in general you will block almost every 2.5nd hit by around 40% reduction when choosing this talent.

Guardian´s Light Increase the healing from Light of the protector by 20%.

Light of the protector normally heals you for 50% of your missing health. This talent increases it to 60% of your missing health. I would not choose this talent since the other 2 are much better.

Last DefenderEach enemy within 8 yards reduces the damage that you take by 3%. This effect has diminishing returns.

At first look this seems like a good talent when doing dungeons and trash mobs. And even Raid fights with many mobs. At second look, when tanking several adds since every add increase your dmg reduction by 3%. Tanking a dungeon with an average group of 3 mobs around you will give you 9% extra dmg reduction which is actually a lot. Now, what about a boss/single mob. You will get a 3% dmg extra reduction all the time (well with “diminishing return” which bothers me because it doesn’t tell you the chance) while tanking.

Holy ShieldorLast Defender

So the question is, is 10% extra block chance the when blocked (in general every 2.5 hit you take) it reduces the dmg you take by 40% better than a minimum dmg reduction of 3% that increases the more adds (8 yards) around you (in average 3 extra adds à 9% dmg recution) with a chance on diminishing returns.

At the moment I would say that Holy Shield is better even with several mobs. But if Last Defender will be improved, such as increasing the 8 yard or the % dmg reduction the more adds, then this talent would be a good choice when attacking several adds.

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Fist of Justice Your spells that consume Holy Power reduce the remaining cooldown on Hammer of Justice by 10 sec.

The normal cooldown is 1 min, so it´s reduced to 50 seconds instead. Now, looking at the other 2 talents, this is not even close to how good they are compared to this one.

RepentanceForces an enemy target into meditation, incapacitating the target and dealing up to a maximum of 25% of the target´s health in dmg over 1 min. useable against Demons, Dragonkin, Giants, Humanoids and Undead.

My first thought was, what happens if I use Repentance on the same target directly after? So I checked it out.

When using Repentance on a target without entering combat, the target heals up again (maybe a bug atm). When using Repentance, the 2nd time on same target, the dmg stopped (it stops doing dmg after 1 min) no matter if u spam repentance or not).

I would only use this talent if cc is needed by you (extra cc target/no one else have cc).

Blinding Light Emits a dazzling light in all directions, blinding enemies within 10 yards and dealing dmg and cause them to wander disoriented for 6 seconds. Holy dmg will not break the disorient effect.

This seems like the best talent to choose since it blinds ALL enemies around you for 6 seconds and you can use your holy spells meanwhile on them. So it will work as a spell interrupt and an enemy control when taking too much dmg at once from one for several mobs.

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Blessing of SpellwardingPlaces a blessing on a party or raid member, protecting them from all magical attacks for 10 sec. Cannot be used on a target with Forbearance (cause 30 sec Forbearance). Replaces Blessing of Protection.

Think of Blessing of Protection that is only good at fights that does magical dmg and that´s it. No more, no less. I think this was a glyph before. Maybe just change Blessing of Protection to spell and physical dmg reduction.

Blessing of Salvation Temporarily removes all threat from the target and causes all additional threat generated to be transferred to the casting paladin.

This is more or less like this spell was/is before Legion. The main question is, how big is the chance to loose threat nowadays? Really bad talent I must say, especially compared to Retribution Aura.

Well, until Blessing of Salvation is highly improved or replaced with something else, this is the best talent to choose. Because, you basically do dmg on targets that attacks someone else (without you targeting that enemy) on every hit the enemy does AND you generate threat on each hit AND its 60 yards radius which is A LOT.

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Divine Bulwark Instantly grants 3 charges on Shield of the Righteous.

Base cooldown on Shield of Righteous is 12 seconds. And it last for 4.5 seconds. What happens at endgame raiding when players are topped with haste? My ilvl is 690 on alpha and I´ve already reduced the cooldown to 11 seconds. So there will be a window of 6.5 seconds already now in which I won’t have the dmg reduction if I spam Shield of Righteous. And if something critical happens during that window, I can always use the Divine Bulwark talent tree spell.

Meaning, with this talent, you can spam Shield of Righteous ALL THE TIME and reduce dmg intake a lot, and use this talent when there is a window when you don’t have active mitigation on and you really need it.

Crusader’s Judgement When you cast Judgement, you have a 15% chance of refreshing the cooldown on Avenger´s Shield.

Let´s say you refresh the cooldown on Avenger´s shield EVERYTIME you cast Judgement. That will only increase your dmg on 1 or more targets. Now ask yourself, do you want to do more dmg or take less dmg as a protection paladin? Oh, when leveling? Fair enough.

Blessed Hammer Throw a Blessed Hammer that spirals outward, dealing Holy dmg to enemies that it hits and causing them to deal 15% less dmg to the Paladin on their next auto attack. Replaces Hammer of the Righteous.

This talent sounded awesome until I read the part about that the dmg reduction was on their next auto attack. This talent has a 3 sec recharge, so every 3rd second, you will get dmg reduction on auto attacks only. It is a good AoE puller, but how far can it reach? It doesn’t say.

But remember that this replaces you Hammer of the Righteous, which already does aoe dmg when standing on consecration (or choosing the talent “Concentrated Hammer” so you don’t need the consecration). Also you already have consecration, Retribution Aura, Hammer of Righteous and Blinding Light as Aoe dmg/threat generators.

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Righteous Protector Each time you use Shield of the Righteous, your remaining cooldown on Light of the Protector is reduced by 3 sec.

Since you can spam Shield of Righteous as much as you want and have Divine Bulwark as backup when needed, you will reduce the Light of the protector drastically.

Judgement of the Light Your Judgement applies Judgment of Light on the target, causing the next 40 successful attacks against the target to heal the attacker. This effect can only occur once every few seconds on each target.

When I was using this talent I felt that my health went down faster with this talent compared to Righteous Protector. It depends on how many targets there are and what the definition of successful attacks are. Does “passive” attacks such as consecration, Retribution aura, Blinding Light include? Also, it feels like you need to do loads of attacks (not amount of dmg) for the heals to be significant.

Righteous Protector seems by far better.

Consecrated Ground Up to 6 allies standing within your Consecration receive healing every 1 second (depending on your haste and level) and enemies within your consecration have 50% reduced movement speed.

This talent is so dependent on dungeon/raid fight. Nevertheless, you will first of all probably only heal melee and that is even not likely since you stand in front of boss and melee stands behind boss on most fights so they will very unlikely stand on your consecration. Also, how often have you been in the need to slow mobs? So, like I said this talent is sooo situation dependent.

(100)

Aegis of Light Raise an Aegis Light, reducing all damage taken by 20% for you and all allies standing within 10 yards behind you for 6 seconds.

This is probably the worst one. Because the cooldown is 5 min on something that reduce dmg by 20% for 6 seconds. And the only time it will help allies are on fights when everyone needs to be stacked. And not only stacked, but REALLY stacked on top of each other more or less, since they need to stand within 10 yards.

Knight Templar Reduces the cooldown on Divine Steed by 50% and reduce all dmg taken while mounted on your Divine Steed by 20%.

You can use this talent every 1 min and it reduce dmg taken by 20%. By far much better than Knight Templar. Also, the animation is priceless. But Increasing the duration of Knight Templar would make the talent more interesting since it is a lvl 100 talent and 20% for 4 seconds is not that great. A 4 sec duration talent for me would be a talent that is needed for specific vital moments such as “Final Stand”.

Final Stand Reduces the cooldown of Divine Shield by 50% and when you use Divine Shield, you also taunt all targets within 15 yards for 8 seconds.

I can definitely see this talent useful. Imagine boss fights such as Lord Iskar, when you tank several adds, and when dmg is getting to high, pop Divine Shield and still have agro on all of them. Same as single boss fights that lasts around 10 min. Then you can use this “backup” up to 4 times.